Post by davidhr on Jan 27, 2015 8:53:42 GMT -5
Lara was still out of the public eye last week, but future activities received plenty of attention.
In response to questions that arose last week concerning a reported ‘Best of Lara’ CD release in February, the music company ‘Odacity’ responded in a notification to this site that read, “Hello, the "Best of.." album to be released by Odacity does not have anything to do with any release in Italy, of which we have no information and are not involved. The "Best of.." album to be released by Odacity will include the title "Voce", as well as remix versions of "Make Me Yours Tonight". Regards, Odacity”. They then went on to indicate (www.facebook.com/odacity/posts/914988908525473) “To all fans of Lara Fabian: we would like to inform you, that the release of the "Best of.." album of Lara Fabian by Odacity has been postponed a few weeks, to allow us to include the title "Voce" which will be performed by Lara Fabian at the San Remo Festival. Thank you for your patience.” And the Lara Fabian Turkiye FB site stated that the album would be released in mid-March by Odacity and distributed by DMC [probably ‘Destination Management Company in Turkey, www.ods.com.tr/]. The album will apparently include "Je t'aime", "Je suis malade" and "Adagio" as well as "Voce" and a remix of ‘Make Me Yours Tonight’, among others.
‘La page des Fabianesk’ produced the following wonderfully atmospheric cover from this news
www.facebook.com/lapagedesfabianesk/photos/a.501598913233562.1073741827.501577866569000/822067497853367/
Perhaps the San Remo article last week was really referring to this release, and just got the month wrong, or it subsequently changed. We'll see if March is really the month that it gets released.
Speaking of San Remo, now approximately three weeks away, media promotion is heating up, with Lara often featured as the ‘one international’ artist. An article in the Italian publication ‘Fun Week’ (http://www.funweek.it/musica/festival-sanremo/big-in-gara-sanremo-2015-lara-fabian.php) gave some highlights of Lara’s career (and included the ‘May 2015’ release date for her next French solo album, which Lara has already postponed to the fall). A similar article, both taken from the San Remo publicity info, appeared at (https://www.blogdicultura.it/sanremo-2015-speciale-big-gara-lara-fabian-identikit-24131.html). A photo of all the contestants has been released; it’s at (thanks to Lara Fabian est ton autre):
www.facebook.com/166959643357708/photos/a.168982793155393.43222.166959643357708/789053127815020/
You can see Lara near the photographer below the huge parasol for the lighting on the right.
Lara appeared in the Italian publication "Sorrisi e canzoni TV" (Smiles ad Songs TV) (again thanks to Lara Fabian est ton autre), which can be seen at:
www.facebook.com/166959643357708/photos/a.168982793155393.43222.166959643357708/788656791187987/
Lara will sing ‘Sto Male’ (again, the Italian version of ‘Je suis malade’) on Thursday, February 12, and ‘Voce’ the next day. The caption on the photo reads, “Lara Fabian (45) smiles radiantly. Not her first language, yet the Belgian singer surprises us with a flawless Italian.” What they apparently don’t realize it that it was, literally, her ‘first’ language, given that her first five years were spent primarily in Sicily.
Posters and advertisements are appearing for the various events on Lara’s upcoming tour. There is an add for her concert in Hebrew, seen in the paper at:
www.facebook.com/LaraFabianBrasil/photos/a.127218347315890.11578.126171034087288/789620897742295/
Program from Bratislava, at:
www.facebook.com/246805652001644/photos/a.247913198557556.83420.246805652001644/1012147338800801/?type=1&theater
Photo from Stockholm:
www.facebook.com/246805652001644/photos/a.247913198557556.83420.246805652001644/1012623998753135/?type=1&theater
There was concern voiced in last week’s Update that if Lara was relying on her Russian speaking audience to fill up the seats at her U.S. concerts, she needed to make a better effort to reach them. Apparently she has, as can be seen in this promo video playing in Russia:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl7wvSS_qCg
One can’t overstate the irony of having Lara’s US tour promoted in a Russian video; perhaps she should be hired by the US State Department!
‘Anonimuzz’ had a very interesting article about Lara and her upcoming activities, at:
anonimuzz.hubpages.com/hub/Lara-Fabian-in-2015-New-Concerts-New-Albums. The article, in English, is reproduced here for completeness:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lara Fabian "Voce" in 2015: New Concerts, New Album(s), New Songs!
By anonimuzz
2013 was the year of Le Secret, the name of the latest studio album of original songs by Lara Fabian, as well as of the concert tour that helped to promote it. It was also in 2013 that an accident in a TV studio gave the singer a serious ear injury, which forced her to first postpone and then cancel the aforementioned tour. For this reason, 2014 started out as a year of anxiety for Fabian's fans, but it actually turned out to be a year of renewed expectations, as the singer returned to the stage in multiple countries for multiple events and promises that fans worldwide will see and hear much more of her in 2015.
2015: New Albums
2015 will bring fresh new music by Lara Fabian, not before a second release of a "Best Of" album. This release will be limited to Turkey, where it will be backed by Odacity Records. Fabian is intent on conquering this new territory, where she first carved a path with the 2014 summer release of "Make Me Yours Tonight / Al Götür Beni", an upbeat duet (#1 hit in Turkey) with Turkish singer Mustafa Ceceli, with Turkish lyrics by Sezen Aksu.
It is in the fall of 2015 that new songs are set to be released, in not one, but two new original studio albums. Ready to cover all fronts, Lara Fabian is preparing one studio album in English and one studio album in French simultaneously, also including one Italian song in each one of them. Lara Fabian is going to perform in the San Remo Festival in Italy, in February 2015, to sing what might be one of these Italian songs, called "Voce" (a new collaboration with Mustafa Ceceli), along with the covers "Sto Male" and "Almeno Tu Nell'Universo". Specific release dates are still unknown, but, in a November 2014 interview for a Belgian newspaper, the singer stated that a first single would be released in May 2015. For now, the only certain dates are those of some of the singer's new concerts for 2015, as part of the second installment of Lara Fabian's "Best Of" tour.
2015: New Concerts!
Lara Fabian's "Best Of" tour in 2012-13 took the singer across much of Eastern Europe, including Russia, where the singer faced the Siberian winter in concert venues with less than ideal temperature conditions. In 2014, the singer decided to resurface the concept and started off a new "Best Of" tour, which will extend to 2015. This time, the concept will be more inclusive, musically and geographically.
More inclusive geographically because the singer has been visiting territories that are either new or rarely visited, such as Finland, Germany, Azerbaijan, Lithuania or Bulgaria. In 2015, the trend will continue, with scheduled concerts in Estonia, Sweden, Israel, Canada and the USA, where Fabian will perform, notably, in Hollywood, FL, and Los Angeles, CA. Only the French and Belgian fans remain outside of the plans, even after having faced the sudden cancellation of the Le Secret tour in 2014, not before multiple cancellations and date changes of individual concerts in late 2013.
The "Best Of" tour is also more inclusive musically because long-forgotten songs, such as "Yeliel" and "Calling You", are now part of the setlist, along with the classic and still breathtaking "Caruso", the more recent "Il Est Lune", from Le Secret, and "Make Me Yours Tonight/Al Götür Beni", the only uptempo song in the setlist, since "I Will Love Again" was added to the setlist in a ballad version.
"Best Of", But Not Quite
These new musical additions don't fully make up for the lack of renewal and excitement in the remainder of Lara Fabian's live repertoire in the "Best Of" tour, especially because some of the additions themselves are hard to explain, such as "Yeliel". The ballad version of "I Will Love Again", although pleasant, was included in a setlist already very rich in mellow numbers that could potentially benefit from an extra uptempo number.
Lifeless songs persist in the "Best Of" setlist to this day, such as "Alfonsina Y El Mar", a Spanish cover taking up space which would be better used by a Spanish song from Fabian's own repertoire. Songs such as "J'y Crois Encore" and "I Guess I Loved You" also continue to be performed, even though these were hardly ever not performed in a tour or one-off performance and the acoustic arrangements are consistently the same, offering zero novelty. Finally, songs such as "Je T'Aime" or "Je Suis Malade", which are undeniably two of Fabian's most recognized and loved songs, also suffer from the lack of novelty in the old arrangements and are probably the songs that lose the most magic in an acoustic setting, sadly failing to carry all listeners away in the way a full-band, full-voiced version easily could. The acoustic setting, even with great musicians, feels poor and limiting, rather than intimate, and not even the beautiful lighting can make up for the very empty stage. The upcoming 2015 concerts will certainly make a far stronger impression if some changes are implemented.
The Russian Fairytale Continues
The "Best Of" concert tour may keep it simple as far as visual appeal goes, but the joint performances of Lara Fabian and Igor Krutoy leave nothing to be desired in that respect. The musical partnership between the two is still going strong to this day and it was celebrated in great style in Igor Krutoy's 60th anniversary celebratory concerts, in Moscow's Kremlin Palace (November 15 and 16) and in Moscow's Olympic Stadium (November 22).
In the first two dates, Lara Fabian sung "Mademoiselle Hyde", "Llora", "Russian Fairytale" and "Vocalise", all taken from the project Mademoiselle Zhivago, as well as "Angels Pass Away" and the duets "Toi et Moi", with Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, "Sons and Daughters", with South-Korean soprano Sumi Jo, and "Ti Amo Così", with both operatic singers. For the third date, later broadcasted in a TV special — and probably entirely in playback for that reason —, Fabian performed "Always", the Russian version of "Je T'Aime Encore" and "Toccami", the latter with multiple dancers and an oversized chair covered in red silk accentuating the sultriness of the song. The Russian version of "Je T'Aime Encore" was also performed in December 7, for the Russian New Year's TV Special Song of the Year.
Lara Fabian and Igor Krutoy will certainly continue working together throughout 2015 and a new collaborative studio album has probably been in development for quite some time already, as suggested by the premieres of multiple songs in the New Wave Festival in Latvia, both in 2014 and in previous years, where the duo has repeatedly performed as part of the headliners. This year, Lara Fabian sang "Furious" and "Running".
Committed to Charity
The singer's multiple commitments in foreign countries didn't keep her from returning to Belgium and taking part in two charity events: the launch of the project "Cocon", by Fondation Papillon (Butterfly Foundation, in English), in Charleroi, in November 27, and the Little Dreams Foundation Gala, in Brussels, in November 28, where Fabian also performed. Lara Fabian has a longstanding commitment to charitable causes and has been part of multiple events of the kind over the years.
----------------------------------------
The comments about Lara’s tour, ones that also may apply to the upcoming ‘Best of’ album, is that it should have been called something else, perhaps “The many languages of love”. As the writer noted, a number of the entries on the setlist are not really a ‘best of’, so the title is misleading, but as a multilingual experience, they are all appropriate. The writer also didn’t realize that the lack of up-tempo songs, in these ‘un-plugged’ concerts, was in an effort to save Lara’s hearing, as she pointed out several months ago. And while it’s not clear where this particular information comes from, this is the first article to indicate that the English album is due to be released in the fall as well. Finally, it wonders (like we do) why the next album with Krutoi is taking so long to be released.
The ‘most interesting photo of the week’ (IMHO) can be found at:
www.facebook.com/LaraFabianBrasil/photos/a.127218347315890.11578.126171034087288/782718621765856/
It was actually a ‘happy birthday’ photo from Lara Fabian Brasil (whose site is undergoing ‘renovation’ currently).
Starting this weekend, Lara jumps back into the public spotlight, with her scheduled appearance for Krutoi’s gala festivities in Brooklyn, N.Y. As a ‘special guest’ she should have time to perform, despite the presence of some 6 other artists. By next week, we’ll have a report.
David
In response to questions that arose last week concerning a reported ‘Best of Lara’ CD release in February, the music company ‘Odacity’ responded in a notification to this site that read, “Hello, the "Best of.." album to be released by Odacity does not have anything to do with any release in Italy, of which we have no information and are not involved. The "Best of.." album to be released by Odacity will include the title "Voce", as well as remix versions of "Make Me Yours Tonight". Regards, Odacity”. They then went on to indicate (www.facebook.com/odacity/posts/914988908525473) “To all fans of Lara Fabian: we would like to inform you, that the release of the "Best of.." album of Lara Fabian by Odacity has been postponed a few weeks, to allow us to include the title "Voce" which will be performed by Lara Fabian at the San Remo Festival. Thank you for your patience.” And the Lara Fabian Turkiye FB site stated that the album would be released in mid-March by Odacity and distributed by DMC [probably ‘Destination Management Company in Turkey, www.ods.com.tr/]. The album will apparently include "Je t'aime", "Je suis malade" and "Adagio" as well as "Voce" and a remix of ‘Make Me Yours Tonight’, among others.
‘La page des Fabianesk’ produced the following wonderfully atmospheric cover from this news
www.facebook.com/lapagedesfabianesk/photos/a.501598913233562.1073741827.501577866569000/822067497853367/
Perhaps the San Remo article last week was really referring to this release, and just got the month wrong, or it subsequently changed. We'll see if March is really the month that it gets released.
Speaking of San Remo, now approximately three weeks away, media promotion is heating up, with Lara often featured as the ‘one international’ artist. An article in the Italian publication ‘Fun Week’ (http://www.funweek.it/musica/festival-sanremo/big-in-gara-sanremo-2015-lara-fabian.php) gave some highlights of Lara’s career (and included the ‘May 2015’ release date for her next French solo album, which Lara has already postponed to the fall). A similar article, both taken from the San Remo publicity info, appeared at (https://www.blogdicultura.it/sanremo-2015-speciale-big-gara-lara-fabian-identikit-24131.html). A photo of all the contestants has been released; it’s at (thanks to Lara Fabian est ton autre):
www.facebook.com/166959643357708/photos/a.168982793155393.43222.166959643357708/789053127815020/
You can see Lara near the photographer below the huge parasol for the lighting on the right.
Lara appeared in the Italian publication "Sorrisi e canzoni TV" (Smiles ad Songs TV) (again thanks to Lara Fabian est ton autre), which can be seen at:
www.facebook.com/166959643357708/photos/a.168982793155393.43222.166959643357708/788656791187987/
Lara will sing ‘Sto Male’ (again, the Italian version of ‘Je suis malade’) on Thursday, February 12, and ‘Voce’ the next day. The caption on the photo reads, “Lara Fabian (45) smiles radiantly. Not her first language, yet the Belgian singer surprises us with a flawless Italian.” What they apparently don’t realize it that it was, literally, her ‘first’ language, given that her first five years were spent primarily in Sicily.
Posters and advertisements are appearing for the various events on Lara’s upcoming tour. There is an add for her concert in Hebrew, seen in the paper at:
www.facebook.com/LaraFabianBrasil/photos/a.127218347315890.11578.126171034087288/789620897742295/
Program from Bratislava, at:
www.facebook.com/246805652001644/photos/a.247913198557556.83420.246805652001644/1012147338800801/?type=1&theater
Photo from Stockholm:
www.facebook.com/246805652001644/photos/a.247913198557556.83420.246805652001644/1012623998753135/?type=1&theater
There was concern voiced in last week’s Update that if Lara was relying on her Russian speaking audience to fill up the seats at her U.S. concerts, she needed to make a better effort to reach them. Apparently she has, as can be seen in this promo video playing in Russia:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl7wvSS_qCg
One can’t overstate the irony of having Lara’s US tour promoted in a Russian video; perhaps she should be hired by the US State Department!
‘Anonimuzz’ had a very interesting article about Lara and her upcoming activities, at:
anonimuzz.hubpages.com/hub/Lara-Fabian-in-2015-New-Concerts-New-Albums. The article, in English, is reproduced here for completeness:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lara Fabian "Voce" in 2015: New Concerts, New Album(s), New Songs!
By anonimuzz
2013 was the year of Le Secret, the name of the latest studio album of original songs by Lara Fabian, as well as of the concert tour that helped to promote it. It was also in 2013 that an accident in a TV studio gave the singer a serious ear injury, which forced her to first postpone and then cancel the aforementioned tour. For this reason, 2014 started out as a year of anxiety for Fabian's fans, but it actually turned out to be a year of renewed expectations, as the singer returned to the stage in multiple countries for multiple events and promises that fans worldwide will see and hear much more of her in 2015.
2015: New Albums
2015 will bring fresh new music by Lara Fabian, not before a second release of a "Best Of" album. This release will be limited to Turkey, where it will be backed by Odacity Records. Fabian is intent on conquering this new territory, where she first carved a path with the 2014 summer release of "Make Me Yours Tonight / Al Götür Beni", an upbeat duet (#1 hit in Turkey) with Turkish singer Mustafa Ceceli, with Turkish lyrics by Sezen Aksu.
It is in the fall of 2015 that new songs are set to be released, in not one, but two new original studio albums. Ready to cover all fronts, Lara Fabian is preparing one studio album in English and one studio album in French simultaneously, also including one Italian song in each one of them. Lara Fabian is going to perform in the San Remo Festival in Italy, in February 2015, to sing what might be one of these Italian songs, called "Voce" (a new collaboration with Mustafa Ceceli), along with the covers "Sto Male" and "Almeno Tu Nell'Universo". Specific release dates are still unknown, but, in a November 2014 interview for a Belgian newspaper, the singer stated that a first single would be released in May 2015. For now, the only certain dates are those of some of the singer's new concerts for 2015, as part of the second installment of Lara Fabian's "Best Of" tour.
2015: New Concerts!
Lara Fabian's "Best Of" tour in 2012-13 took the singer across much of Eastern Europe, including Russia, where the singer faced the Siberian winter in concert venues with less than ideal temperature conditions. In 2014, the singer decided to resurface the concept and started off a new "Best Of" tour, which will extend to 2015. This time, the concept will be more inclusive, musically and geographically.
More inclusive geographically because the singer has been visiting territories that are either new or rarely visited, such as Finland, Germany, Azerbaijan, Lithuania or Bulgaria. In 2015, the trend will continue, with scheduled concerts in Estonia, Sweden, Israel, Canada and the USA, where Fabian will perform, notably, in Hollywood, FL, and Los Angeles, CA. Only the French and Belgian fans remain outside of the plans, even after having faced the sudden cancellation of the Le Secret tour in 2014, not before multiple cancellations and date changes of individual concerts in late 2013.
The "Best Of" tour is also more inclusive musically because long-forgotten songs, such as "Yeliel" and "Calling You", are now part of the setlist, along with the classic and still breathtaking "Caruso", the more recent "Il Est Lune", from Le Secret, and "Make Me Yours Tonight/Al Götür Beni", the only uptempo song in the setlist, since "I Will Love Again" was added to the setlist in a ballad version.
"Best Of", But Not Quite
These new musical additions don't fully make up for the lack of renewal and excitement in the remainder of Lara Fabian's live repertoire in the "Best Of" tour, especially because some of the additions themselves are hard to explain, such as "Yeliel". The ballad version of "I Will Love Again", although pleasant, was included in a setlist already very rich in mellow numbers that could potentially benefit from an extra uptempo number.
Lifeless songs persist in the "Best Of" setlist to this day, such as "Alfonsina Y El Mar", a Spanish cover taking up space which would be better used by a Spanish song from Fabian's own repertoire. Songs such as "J'y Crois Encore" and "I Guess I Loved You" also continue to be performed, even though these were hardly ever not performed in a tour or one-off performance and the acoustic arrangements are consistently the same, offering zero novelty. Finally, songs such as "Je T'Aime" or "Je Suis Malade", which are undeniably two of Fabian's most recognized and loved songs, also suffer from the lack of novelty in the old arrangements and are probably the songs that lose the most magic in an acoustic setting, sadly failing to carry all listeners away in the way a full-band, full-voiced version easily could. The acoustic setting, even with great musicians, feels poor and limiting, rather than intimate, and not even the beautiful lighting can make up for the very empty stage. The upcoming 2015 concerts will certainly make a far stronger impression if some changes are implemented.
The Russian Fairytale Continues
The "Best Of" concert tour may keep it simple as far as visual appeal goes, but the joint performances of Lara Fabian and Igor Krutoy leave nothing to be desired in that respect. The musical partnership between the two is still going strong to this day and it was celebrated in great style in Igor Krutoy's 60th anniversary celebratory concerts, in Moscow's Kremlin Palace (November 15 and 16) and in Moscow's Olympic Stadium (November 22).
In the first two dates, Lara Fabian sung "Mademoiselle Hyde", "Llora", "Russian Fairytale" and "Vocalise", all taken from the project Mademoiselle Zhivago, as well as "Angels Pass Away" and the duets "Toi et Moi", with Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, "Sons and Daughters", with South-Korean soprano Sumi Jo, and "Ti Amo Così", with both operatic singers. For the third date, later broadcasted in a TV special — and probably entirely in playback for that reason —, Fabian performed "Always", the Russian version of "Je T'Aime Encore" and "Toccami", the latter with multiple dancers and an oversized chair covered in red silk accentuating the sultriness of the song. The Russian version of "Je T'Aime Encore" was also performed in December 7, for the Russian New Year's TV Special Song of the Year.
Lara Fabian and Igor Krutoy will certainly continue working together throughout 2015 and a new collaborative studio album has probably been in development for quite some time already, as suggested by the premieres of multiple songs in the New Wave Festival in Latvia, both in 2014 and in previous years, where the duo has repeatedly performed as part of the headliners. This year, Lara Fabian sang "Furious" and "Running".
Committed to Charity
The singer's multiple commitments in foreign countries didn't keep her from returning to Belgium and taking part in two charity events: the launch of the project "Cocon", by Fondation Papillon (Butterfly Foundation, in English), in Charleroi, in November 27, and the Little Dreams Foundation Gala, in Brussels, in November 28, where Fabian also performed. Lara Fabian has a longstanding commitment to charitable causes and has been part of multiple events of the kind over the years.
----------------------------------------
The comments about Lara’s tour, ones that also may apply to the upcoming ‘Best of’ album, is that it should have been called something else, perhaps “The many languages of love”. As the writer noted, a number of the entries on the setlist are not really a ‘best of’, so the title is misleading, but as a multilingual experience, they are all appropriate. The writer also didn’t realize that the lack of up-tempo songs, in these ‘un-plugged’ concerts, was in an effort to save Lara’s hearing, as she pointed out several months ago. And while it’s not clear where this particular information comes from, this is the first article to indicate that the English album is due to be released in the fall as well. Finally, it wonders (like we do) why the next album with Krutoi is taking so long to be released.
The ‘most interesting photo of the week’ (IMHO) can be found at:
www.facebook.com/LaraFabianBrasil/photos/a.127218347315890.11578.126171034087288/782718621765856/
It was actually a ‘happy birthday’ photo from Lara Fabian Brasil (whose site is undergoing ‘renovation’ currently).
Starting this weekend, Lara jumps back into the public spotlight, with her scheduled appearance for Krutoi’s gala festivities in Brooklyn, N.Y. As a ‘special guest’ she should have time to perform, despite the presence of some 6 other artists. By next week, we’ll have a report.
David
